Sysvinit vs. Upstart: Boot Performance for Debian and Ubuntu

Developers from Debian and Ubuntu met and discussed ways to improve boot performance at Canonical’s London headquarters.

The suggestion for the aforementioned cooperation came from Mark Shuttleworth. Further plans will be made at the Debconf 09.The first results of this cooperation can be found on Ubuntu’s mailing list. This is extremely crucial because the acceleration of the boot process requires a complete overhaul of the boot sequence. For this reason, a change from Sysvinit to Upstart would make sense.

The Ubuntu project would like to completely implement Upstart for version 10.04 with the first changes appearing on version 9.10. The question is whether the Debian project will follow suit. Debian developer Petter Reinholdtsen was not without reservations regarding this move which lead to discussion on how the transition could be made as convenient and simple as possible. In addition to the required code updates, a continuous cooperation to extend beyond the conference in has been proposed.

Further plans for changes will be discussed at the Debconf. More background information On the topic of Sysvinit/Upstart has been posted by Colin Watson on Ubuntu’s Develop-Discuss mailing list as an answer upon request by Ubuntu users. Those interested in notes from the Debian/Ubuntu developer meeting, may find them here.